(editor's note: It's becoming clear, through years of research, that Dee Louis operates best without supervision. We had recently tailed him to Wyoming, to which he responded with a year-long blackout on posting. However last month we decided to end all communication with him, and he replied 2 weeks later from Tanzania. His comments appear here, unedited)
We're still walking out here, and the night hasn't begun to fall. That's the thing about The Spin... it's always waking up somewhere. Life can be reduced or expanded, but it's always going to come down to what's right there, in front of your face. If you can't live it, you can't know it. The Motto. Off we go....
I suppose at one point the world was a lot simpler, and I suppose that right before that, it was infinitely complex. When Lucy or whoever stepped out from the primordial ooze, the whole thing got much more in a line. That thing - the first steps, the dawn, whatever you call it - it happened a million years ago yesterday, and it happened right here. In a flash, existence woke up and we were finally able to start pursuing the secrets. Here we are a million years later, and we are still asking. But Lucy, ah. Lucy knew.
Lucy was born in the rift. The rift that tore at the continents and tried to shuck half of Africa back into the sea. That was the first of many incidents of Earthen Revenge. Ah, the poetry of that... to be born in the valley of death. But really, isn't it all the same? Trees growing out of decaying matter, and all that? If it's all on a spin, then does it ever really stop? It spins as much today as it did back then. This isn't Newton's Billiards.
Oh hell, reign it in already. It's not like you got shot in the war and are seeing the bright light. Tell a STORY...
David Mitchell once said that if you ever wanted to just plain get off your ass, then India was the place. There, he explained, it is quite simply impossible to feel bad for yourself, to lay in bed all day, to be lazy. You step onto that street, and it's right here, right now. That's Nairobi. You don't consider anything. You don't contemplate. No thought digs more than a layer deep. Here, take a test: step out onto that curb and tell me what your cousin's name is....
Too late.
There's quick-moving cities (Tokyo still holding the trophy on that one) and then there's quick-moving cities with Bonus Chaos. That's Nairobi. Everyone move, only nobody do it logically. Just GO. Pick a direction (or not) and simply mash the gas pedal. Eventually, like moths in a jar, we'll either figure it out, or die. Again, not much difference.
If the goal is to eventually see every side of the dice, then we're making good progress. Call this the "danger" side. I don't know what it's like in Northern Mexico right now, but I'm guessing it's close. I can taste The Fear. You don't get a lot more dangerous than Africa (both in biological and human threats), and that's something that you can't really forget. I remember a time in Hawaii... we had a huge tsunami warning. They drove by on the Kam highway blasting out evacuation orders. They said that by 10am (it was 6 at the time) that the tsunami would arrive and we should evacuate to higher ground. Our house was already at the top of a hill... it would've taken a 200 foot wave to take us down. We sat there that morning and Reasoned with the thing. Finally, we came to a conclusion... we were NOT going to be "those people" on the news. You know the ones. The mother who brings a 3 month old baby to The Dark Knight Rises. The guy who stays in his house in Tuscaloosa as Aunty Em gets lifted away to the heavens. And you see the news and think "What a tragedy... but what the hell were they DOING there?" So that's why we play it safe. We're not going to be those people. And, as surely as we fled the tsunami, we take the book's advice to "never go out after dark, ever". Alright then. Dinners will be behind fences. Enough said.
But that's ok, because there are a few worlds out here, and the Bonus Chaos only stretches as far as the city limits. Eventually, we slink back to the ooze. The Great Rift Valley lays open before us, a miles-wide swath cut down the globe like a gash in a golf ball, absolutely teeming with life so utterly incomprehensible. The biodiversity here matches anything I've seen before, and we find ourselves stunned at the proximity we can get to this kind of bubbling nature. This is where it began, this is where it continues, and this is where it will never end. I ask the guide "What natural defense to the wildebeest have against the lions?" He replies "There are many of them". Simple mathematics, that's the advantage. Evolution just took a day off on that one. I suppose it's counter-evolution, in a way. Something's not allowing the lions to grow in numbers, and that's keeping the denominator (or is it the remainder?) constant. A man with 16 bullets can probably only take down a max of 16 people. So then it's simple... just don't give him another gun.
There are no answers out there, only astounding emptiness, but that's an answer in itself, I suppose. We long ago stopped searching and started wandering. The greatest thing being to find yourself in a place. I suppose "find" implies there was first some "searching". But not necessarily. Because just like you can find yourself bellied up to the bar drinking Shiner at the B&B BBQ, so too can you find yourself sitting in a Swahili restaurant after sundown during Ramadan, wishing that you could never blink again.
Our lives are a story. It started when Lucy woke up. It will continue through the evening. We'll be there, and then we'll be here.
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